Saturday, March 11, 2017

by Mike SaresOur Western Culture is obsessed with physical beauty. You probably already knew that. The Bible tells us, “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart..” (1Samuel 16:7) Obviously, the human race has been getting it wrong for thousands of years. This puts us all under a lot of stress to present well.

I wonder what things would have been like if we were still in the Garden of Eden. We would not prefer anyone based upon looks. We’d experience racial equality! Money would be saved and invested in much more worthy causes (since inner beauty would be valued over outer beauty.)

And then, I think about Heaven. Imagine a place where the beauty of men’s and women’s souls would shine through and be the most apparent thing about them. A person’s capacity for being loved by God and ability to love others would be visible.

Since Jesus came establishing the Kingdom of Heaven, those becoming citizens of that kingdom can expect to watch their views on beauty change. Outward appearances become less and less important. We cease judging people on the color of their skin, the shape of their eyes, the size of their noses, the largeness of their breasts, the tone of their bodies, their height, their width, their age, hair, or the whiteness of their teeth. We will instead relate to them based upon the quality of their hearts.

We begin to see why Leonard Sweet says, “For outer-beauty shopping, go to your mall. For inner-beauty development, go to your church.” He just echoes what Jesus’ friend Peter said:

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment … Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight . (1Peter 3:3-4)